I have tried to learn Linux for ages, and have experimented with installing Arch and Ubuntu. Usually something goes wrong when I try to set up a desktop environment after installing Arch in VirtualBox. KDE gave me a problem where I couldn’t log in after getting to the point where my username was displayed in a similar format to how it is for Windows. My end use case is to help keep my workflow more organized than haphazardly throwing files somewhere on my desktop or in a folder nested somewhere that I’ll just inevitably lose :(

Somehow after all this time, I feel like I actually understand less about my computer and what I need to understand regarding its facets. Is it an unrealistic goal to want to eventually run a computer with coreboot and a more cybersecurity heavy emphasis? I’m still a noob at this and any advice would be appreciated!

  • xtapa@feddit.deEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been in your shoes a few months ago. I tried a few distros in VMs and ended up using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It comes with different GUIs and I decided for KDE. As a beginner TW helped me with the built in snapshots mechanism. So before I did anything, I took a snapshot, did it, and if I fucked up, I could easily rollback and try again. Since TW is a rolling release, I now make a snapshot before and after the system update So I always have some stable Rollback snapshots. Gives me so much safety to fiddle around and learn more about Linux. Been loving it so far.

    Make heavy use of ChatGPT. I’ve been chatting about Linux with it for months now.

    • gronjo45@lemm.eeOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      Oh man I’d love built-in snapshots or at least a script that gives me that functionality… I just recently screwed up my Arch system trying to download an older binary from 2008 by first downloading Python 2, but not creating a virtual environment. I’d attribute this to just me being forgetful, but its a lot to initially take in. Snapshots could have saved me!

      I absolutely love ChatGPT for help with Linux! So long as you think about the legitimacy of the responses and check with outside websites, its so amazing to learn regex and commands from it.